Track Plans

[clive23]

Hi All,

At 80 years of age I am having difficulty with Track Plans.

I have a garage 2.5 wide with length of 5.2m

I wish to set up the garage details as the track will run in this size.

Any help in preparing the draft will be grateful

[Nick the Cabin Boy]

Hello Clive!

You haven't actually given us much information to work with at this point, so we don't know what you are trying to achieve. We also have no idea as to your previous experience with model railways. On the premise that you have some experience, I'm assuming that you have decided what scale you are using, and what country and time you wish to model.

That being the case, I further assume that you need some help in getting started in AnyRail. So, apart from any decisions about acale and theme, you also need to decide what track you are going to use. For me, at least, that decision was almost forced on me, as there were very few choices here in Australia.

Let's assume that you have made all your choices about what you want to do, at least in broad terms. To start with, do not be tempted to fill your garage with railway. For me, if I was lucky enough to have such a space as you have, the idea would be to have the layout around the walls, and no wider than what you can comfortably reach over. The layout I am about to start building will be 600mm deep on two sides, and 500mm on the third side (it's a U shape with loops at each end). This means that I can reach into the corners when placing buildings, or (heaven forbid) recovering derailed rolling stock.

The first thing to do in AnyRail is to set the size of your work area. I generally set this at about 200mm larger each way than the space I am planning for (I've designed many layouts, but it's only now (at 72) that I have settled in a "permanent" residence and have a train room). Therefore, I would, in the settings section, allow Length to be 5.4m and and Width to be 2.7m. I personally prefer to have the layout in Landscape rather than Potrait orientation.

I would stongly suggest that, if you have only limited experience, you Google "Model Rail Track Plans" and have a look at what other people are doing. There are also a large numebr of plans on the AnyRail website.

I'll leave it at that for the moment, as it is now 11:30pm and time for bed! I hope I have been of help; feel free to ask me for more.

Cheers for now,

Nick the Cabin Boy,
Elizabeth Grove, South Australia.